Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is asking U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to implement an Arab peace plan as soon as he enters office.

Abbas spoke at an economic conference in the northern West Bank town of Nablus on Saturday.

It is the first time the Palestinian President has asked Obama to adopt the Arab peace plan.

The plan is referred to as the "Arab Initiative." It calls on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Jerusalem. It also calls on Israel to settle the issue of millions of Palestinian refugees.

In return, Arab and Muslim states will recognize Israel and have full relations.

South under fire: Three Qassam rockets were fired Saturday from the northern Gaza Strip at southern Israeli communities. Earlier, a rocket landed in an open area near Ashkelon. No casualties or damages were reported in the attacks.

I EXPECT THIS TO HAPPEN. I EXPECT OBAMA TO SQUEEZE ISRAEL - PUT MORE PRESSURE ON THEM THAN THE ARABS.

MAIN REASON: OBAMA HAS BEEN AN ANTI-ZIONIST HIS WHOLE ADULT LIFE AND HE HAS SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH ANTI-ZIONISTS SINCE THE DAY HE ANNOUNCED. LIKE ZBIG. AND NOW SCOWCROFT. BOTH ARE ANTI-SEMITES.

IN A WASH-POST OP-ED, ZBIG AND BRENT SCOWCROFT CALLED FOR ISRAEL TO WITHDRAW WHICH MADE NO DEMANDS ON ARABS. ZERO. THEY ALSO CALLED FOR INTERNATIONAL MILITARY FORCES TO GUARD THE BORDERS AND TRAIN THE PALESTINIAN ARABS. (EERILY TOO CLOSE TO BIBLICAL PREDICTIONS OF THE END-TIME!)

I have mentioned before that I am a great fan of the world's most "incorrect" head of government, Silvio Berlusconi, conservative Prime Minister of Italy. He is a man of immense good humor but is no fool. He is a billionaire as well as a very successful politician. So I always look forward to the next news item about him. And he does not disappoint. His latest caper is completely harmless but very much him so I am going to mention it.

"Silvio Berlusconi, the flamboyant Italian Prime Minister, played a practical joke on the German Chancellor today by jumping out at her from behind a lamppost when they met for an Italo-German summit in Trieste.

Slipping away from the welcoming committee, the Italian leader hid behind the lamppost and emerged with a cry of "Cucu!" when Angela Merkel stepped out of her official car to enter the regional council headquarters where they were to meet. Reports said the German leader, who appeared amused, opened her arms and replied "Silvio!".

Mr Berlusconi, noted for his unpredictable behaviour and often ill-judged jokes, raised eyebrows recently by describing Barack Obama, the US President-elect, as "suntanned"

What a guy! "Cucu" means "cuckoo". If only there were more politicians with his joy of life! Frau Merkel is also a conservative so it is no surprise that she too was obviously good humored about it. May Silvio continue to raise eyebrows!

And his approach seems to have paid off. Shortly thereafter Frau Merkel announced that Germany was joining Italy in opposing tough EU global warming regulations -- which was quite a U-turn for her. A pretty smart cuckoo somewhere there!

I reproduce below a small part of a very erudite essay by John Fonte headed: "The World is My Constituency. Are liberals rejecting the liberal-internationalist tradition?". Fonte claims, rightly, I think, that the Democrat elite these days don't really like Europe very much after all. They want to build an entirely new world system and Europe plays only a small part in that.

What I think Fonte misses is WHY the Donks have that focus. It is simply that they are anti-American. Europe served for a while as an alternative model to the USA, just as the Soviet Union did in earlier times. But in the end the USA and the EU are too similar. France has done a lot of privatization, Germany always was very capitalist and there is more school choice in Sweden than there is in the USA. And one part of the EU (Britain) even speaks English!

So what the Democrat elite propose instead is a system that is altogether new -- something very different from anything that has gone before -- a "new world order" (to use a much abused phrase). They want an internationalized world where all local or national loyalties are gradually erased or made irrelevant. The outlines of this new global system are of course vague and it is truly amazing that the one part of such a system that actually exists right now -- economic globalization -- somehow does not seem to be part of the deal. Expecting consistency from Leftists is too much to ask, of course.

But in the most basic way, they ARE consistent: Their focus is really on the USA as it exists today, not on anything outside it. "Non-American is good" is their underlying theme. And since the USA is a major player in economic globalization, their hostility to economic globalization is perfectly consistent. So in the end they are typically American, whether they like it or not. As Fonte also notes: "The same Harris poll asked: "Do you think of yourself more as a citizen of the U.S. or a citizen of the world?" The result among registered voters: 83 percent American citizens".

So the Donks are just as America-focused as any other American. It is just that their focus is negative. Instead of loving America they despise it -- and anything non-American will do in a pinch as an alternative. The "global" ideal is just a vague version of extreme anti-Americanism.

They cannot openly acknowledge the depth of their anti-Americanism, of course. Americans are overwhelmingly a patriotic people so to set out openly how much they despise America would be electoral death. But Leftism just IS hatred of the status quo and America is a very large lump of the status quo.

It is interesting that right up to JFK, the Democrats were vocally patriotic. They were less extreme in those days. In those days they hated only some parts of the prevailing system. Now they hate just about all of it. And Sarah Palin embodies all that they hate. That they hate her there is no conceivable doubt and that she also embodies traditional America is also clear.

`We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy," declared Barack Obama in accepting the Democratic nomination. Is that still true? Peter Beinart analyzed the liberal-internationalist tradition in the summer issue of World Affairs, arguing that Wilson and FDR's optimistic vision of liberal internationalism, grounded in collective security and collective peace, confronts a rival Republican vision that he correctly describes as "conservative internationalism" rather than isolationism. The Republican internationalist tradition, from Henry Cabot Lodge to Reagan to McCain (as opposed to the more anti-interventionist Borah-Taft-Paul school), sees the world as a dangerous place. It is less optimistic about human nature and focused more on military alliances than on international institutions, Beinart tells us. Fair enough.

The problem with Obama's oratory and Beinart's thesis is that the traditional framework of liberal internationalism is dying. Liberal internationalism is first of all inter-national, concerned with relations between sovereign nation-states. As practiced by Wilson, FDR, and Truman, liberal internationalism meant American leadership while working with other nations in alliances and in creating new international organizations to promote peace and collective security, such as the United Nations. While they were unquestionably internationalists, those Democrats were also nationalists, pursuing American interests and willing to use force to secure them. While they were mostly Wilsonians, to borrow Walter Russell Mead's formulation, they were also quite willing to employ Hamiltonian (which is to say, economic) and defense-oriented Jacksonian means. Mead specifically mentions the World War II bombing of Japanese and German cities as a Jacksonian turn. In sum, they were national progressives, not transnational progressives.

Today, in the major precincts of mainstream American liberalism, the merely international is passe; the transnational, or global, is ascendant. As John Ruggie of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government puts it, "Postwar institutions including the United Nations were built for an inter-national world, but we have entered a global world. International institutions were designed to reduce external friction, between states; our challenge today is to devise more inclusive forms of global governance."

Typical of leading law-school opinion is a comment in May 2008 by the dean of Georgetown University Law School, Alexander Aleinikoff, who was general counsel of the immigration service under Clinton. Aleinikoff envisions new transnational political authorities above and beyond American constitutional democracy. He writes that we should expect the "development and strengthening of other political institutions - regional, transnational, some global . . . exercising what will be perceived as legitimate legal and coercive authority. . . . That is, a decline in citizenship in the nation-state is likely to be accompanied by new kinds of citizenships associated with `polities' that tax and spend, organize armies and police, establish courts, and promulgate what are perceived to be binding norms. There is no reason that standard accounts of citizenship that link governance and a people cannot be stated at the appropriate level of abstraction to apply to new forms of political association." Aleinikoff's account may be read as both predictive and normative, an indication that American elites not only believe that our constitutional democracy will be subordinated to global authorities but also desire that this come to pass....

All indications are that an Obama administration will move beyond traditional liberal internationalism of the Wilson-FDR-JFK variety to transnationalism. Ultimately this means that the evolving norms of international law would trump the U.S. Constitution.

A Harris poll taken for the Bradley Project on America's National Identity (I participated in the project) asked: "When there is a conflict between the U.S. Constitution and international law, which one should be the highest legal authority for Americans?" Sixty-six percent of registered voters preferred the Constitution, 16 percent put international law first, and 17 percent were undecided. The same Harris poll asked: "Do you think of yourself more as a citizen of the U.S. or a citizen of the world?" The result among registered voters: 83 percent American citizens, 12 percent global citizens, 4 percent not sure.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Now that the intitial weeping and gnashing of teeth following the election has diminished a bit, the conservative blogosphere has a task ahead, that of contrarian dissent. In my view, that dissent shouldn't descend into the lowest of the tactics shown by many of the lefties in the blogosphere and the media. On the other hand, being too refined and too dignified won't likely yield results, with either the electorate or the rebuilding of the Republican Party. Certainly, remaining quiet and sulking will have no outcome.

On January 20, Barack Hussein Obama will take the oath of office and become President of the United States. Like it or not, he will become our President. Certainly, based on what we know about him and his political philosophy, he may lead our nation in a leftist direction, as he attempts to keep even some of his pie-in-the-sky campaign promises. And he will have the partnership of a leftist Congress to help him accomplish his goals. Still, we should also remember that often Presidents govern in a more centrist manner than in the manner in which they campaigned. We'll be finding out soon enough in precisely what direction our new President will lead our nation.

Today's electorate apparently responds to and needs a leader who offers "shock and awe." These same voters also seem to respond more to contrarian dissent and derangement syndrome than to the analysis of political philosophies. Say what you will about the importance of political ideology and integrity, the Democratic Party's campaign was successful. Voters may well suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder and respond to sound bites around which to rally!

In my view, the Right needs to begin anew by offering contrarian dissent — patriotic dissent with just a tinge of Leftist Derangement Syndrome. Appeal to the people may be a logic fallacy, but we've just seen that such an appeal is indeed effective, much like the teachable moment in the classroom. The Right needs to learn and to employ some of the same tactics which the Left used to win the election.

Consider the following video, not only from the perspective of observing the apparent idiocy of those interviewed but also from the perspective of how such an electorate can be moved in a different direction:

Perhaps we truly have entered a new era of voters, ones who need a different kind of appeal from the Right. Based on the above video, we may not have the option of or the time for educating the electorate.

...[T]he Founding Fathers would undoubtedly be outraged over the great lengths to which the Obama campaign and his advocates in the government went in destroying an average American citizen who simply questioned a political candidate....

All in all, the 2008 campaign has been woefully defined by these insidious acts of citizen intimidation, dissent suppression, and privacy invasions.

And although Mr. Obama has not personally carried out these heinous acts, he has the responsibility to rein in his supporters—and his defenders—who, in his name, seek to exert wrath upon “rude” thought criminals like Jessica Hughes and Joe the Plumber.

If Mr. Obama refuses to acknowledge and condemn this anti-American and unconstitutional behavior, one should expect the culture of intimidation to not only carry into his first presidential term, but to thrive as well. If Mr. Obama by his silence sanctions this kind of behavior as a presidential candidate, imagine the role it will play when he is President....

Freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of thought - use 'em or lose 'em. It's not paranoia to sound the alarm if the danger is a real and present one.

The current version of the Gestapo wanted to prosecute a guy in Germany for things he quite legally wrote while at home in Australia. They seemed to think that they could extend their intolerant German law worldwide.

"Australian Holocaust denier Fredrik Toben has won his legal battle with the German Government after it ended its attempt to extradite him from Britain. German prosecutors have withdrawn their appeal against a British court's refusal last month to extradite the controversial historian, who was detained at Heathrow airport on a European arrest warrant for denying the extent of Adolf Hitler's crimes against the Jews.

Dr Toben had been expected to face a tough legal fight over his extradition early next year in the High Court in London. He was arrested while in transit at London's Heathrow airport on October1 under a warrant accusing him of racism and publishing anti-Semitic views. But Westminster Magistrates Court district judge Daphne Wickham ruled the extradition could not go ahead because the warrant contained only "sparse" details about Dr Toben's alleged offences, including exactly what they were, as well as where and when they took place.

Lawyers acting on Germany's behalf had said Dr Toben should be extradited so he could be put on trial for posting anti-Semitic and revisionist material on the internet between 2000 and 2004 in Australia, Germany and in other countries.

The case caused alarm in Britain about freedom of speech because, unlike in Australia and Britain, Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany and offenders can face up to five years in jail.

If they had gotten away with it, visiting any EU country would have been risky unless you checked that you were OK with German law first. Note that even homeschooling is illegal in Germany, under laws dating from the Nazi era. And FORGET about owning a gun! But hate-speech against America is just fine, of course.

I get the following message from Google when I query why DISSECTING LEFTISM is allegedly blocked:

Your blog is locked

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on November 19, 2008. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

I have had blogs classed as spam by Google before and when I challenged it, I used to get the spam classification lifted within a day or two. I first saw a change of policy with my original Obama blog. They classed it as spam and I challenged that repeatedly but they have ignored me. It is now over a MONTH and they are still treating it as a spam blog.

They have three levels of harassment. The most serious is to prevent anybody seeing anything at all on the blog. The blog is effectively deleted. I have never suffered that one so far.

The second level is to leave the blog up but prevent any new postings on the blog. They did that a few months back to GREENIE WATCH but lifted it promptly when I protested.

The third level is to permit continued posting but make you do a very difficult letter-copying task before each post. That is what they subjected my original Obama blog to. And they have kept that restriction in place. In an act of small mercy, however, they have not carried through on their threat to delete the blog entirely.

But the harassment of DISSECTING LEFTISM is a weird mixture of the second and third procedures. They SAY that posting is blocked (level two) but it is not in fact. Only level 3 (preliminary task) is in operation. And that restriction does not look like it is going to go away.

So I infer that they have concluded that level 1 and 2 harassment is a bit uncool so are applying permanent level 3 harassment to any blog that they dislike. They have decided that conservatives like me will be burdened permanently with what is supposed to be only a temporary restriction.

LORD LAWSON: BRITISH GLOBAL WARMING BILL IS "THE MOST ABSURD BILL EVER"

Excerpt from a speech in the House of Lords by the Right Honourable Lord Lawson of Blaby, on 17 November 2008

My Lords, the Minister has given an excellent summary of what we have to discuss here. Let me say just two things. The first is that, as many noble Lords may know, I have taken an interest in this issue for some time. Indeed, I have even written a book on the subject which, I am glad to say, has already been translated into two European languages and three more foreign editions are on the way. It is possible that I have had slightly more influence in that way on affairs than by speaking in this House.

That is not the only reason why I have not spoken previously in this House on the Bill. The other reason is that I felt that it was unbecoming for an unbeliever to take part in a religious service, which is what all this is really about.

Nevertheless, we have the amendments that come back from the Commons to us today. The Bill will go down in history, and future generations will see it, as the most absurd Bill that this House and Parliament as a whole as ever had to examine, and it has now become more absurd with the increase from 60 per cent to 80 per cent. I should like to address as briefly as I can-because I do not propose to speak on any subsequent occasion on this subject- why I think that the Bill is so absurd.

Let us pretend that the planet is warming. We know, of course, that it is not. The figures published each year and, indeed, monthly, by the Met Office or the Hadley Centre, which is a department of the Met Office in association with the climate research unit of the University of East Anglia, show without any doubt that there has been no warming so far this century at all. Some people say that there has been a cooling but, although that has been the slight trend, I think that the margin for error is so great that I would not press that, but there has certainly been no warming.

The majority of climate scientists do not think that if there were a warming, it would be a disaster. Nevertheless, it is possible that warming will resume. The majority of climate scientists believe that warming will resume. I am completely agnostic on that; I do not know. Maybe it will, maybe it will not. The complete standstill this century so far was certainly totally unpredicted by all the elaborate computer models that the scientists use. That is not surprising. The climate is an extremely complex system.

What lies behind this? It was implicit in what the Minister said, although he did not spell it out on this occasion, that by taking this massive step of virtually complete decarbonisation of our economy by 2050 in a mandatory way—something that no other country has done for good reason, because no other country has been so foolish, nor do other countries have the slightest intention of going in this way, but I will come to that in a moment—we in the United Kingdom are giving a global lead that other countries will follow.

To understand that, we have to go back briefly to the G8 meeting last year. At that meeting, Europe, led by Germany and the United Kingdom, sought to isolate the United States in its opposition to binding commitments to cut back carbon dioxide emissions by proposing that the whole of the G8 should agree to a 50 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. I can understand why people are not dying to support anything that President George W Bush supports, but the plan to isolate the United States backfired horribly. Europe was isolated when we got to the G8 summit. The other member countries, Japan, Canada and Russia, all accepted the United States’ position and therefore there was no agreement on a 50 per cent binding commitment to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Fast forward from that, what has happened? Far from making any headway in persuading the rest of the world, even Europe is now backing off.

I remind the Minister of the original plan, the unilateral European cut. We are committing ourselves to a unilateral cut really, irrespective of what any other country does. After all, we account for less than 2 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions and that is falling. Therefore, it makes sense only if we can persuade the rest of the world to go along with this.

Even our supporters in Europe are busy backing off. The unilateral cut of 20 per cent by 2020, agreed to by the European Union—with a little teaser that, if the rest of the world joined in, we would go up to 30 per cent—has been completely abandoned. It was never a binding commitment because you can bind only individual member countries and the individual countries of the union had not agreed—we had but the others had not—to go along with their share in the 20 per cent cut. The seven accession states of central and eastern Europe, plus Italy, have now said that there is definitely no way that they are going to go along with this. The European Union has agreed that this should be looked at again. Nothing will happen. It can only be agreed unanimously and will be looked at again in December this year, after the Poznan meeting, which I hope the Minister will grace with his presence. It will be an educational event for him.

Not only have those countries said that they will not go along with it, but Germany has always had a slightly equivocal position, because, in addition to ostensibly being very keen on this policy, it subsidises its coal industry more than the rest of the European Union put together. Indeed that is contrary to European Union law and it has to secure a waiver from European law to enable it do that, for which it fights to the death, and successfully so far. However, the German Government, have said that energy-intensive sectors must be exempted from the European emissions trading system. Indeed, an official government spokesman said only the other day that we have got to prevent companies being threatened by climate protection requirements. That makes nonsense of the whole policy. If Germany is saying that, the others will go the same way. Therefore, we are in the position of being completely on our own.

"There's no such thing as right and wrong" is an abandonment of thought

There are fundamental differences between the VISIONS of the left and the right. Visions are the basic beliefs about humanity, human nature, the role of government and more that lie BENEATH policy -- that LEAD to policy -- and the Democrat and the Republican are fundamentally at odds.

The left, seeing all judgment as prejudice (since anything you believe is tainted by your own circumstances such as skin color, nation of birth, religoin -- or lack thereof -- economic status, etc) believe the only way to eliminate the evils of bigotry is to never think at all. To the Modern Liberal, rational and moral thought is believed to be a hate crime. To them, "discriminating thought" is the evil of having discriminated. The Right, on the other hand, believes that discriminating and moral thought is, while clearly flawed, utterly essential and, in fact, the only way to make a better world.

This leads the Left and the Right to very different places with regard to policy. Because of these diametrically opposed visions, the Right seeks to help people live better lives by encouraging them to engage in the better behaviors. The Left -- rejecting the discriminating thought required to RECOGNIZE the better behaviors -- does not create policy designed to promote these better behaviors and, in fact, seeing the recognition of the better as acts of bigotry, actually works to promote the lesser behaviors which they see as "under seige" from the bigots.

At this point, when their work to undermine the promotion of the better behaviors -- and, their efforts to rehabilitate the image of the lesser behaviors -- lead as they have and must to greater suffering and failure, the Democrat THEN steps in with policy designed for no other purpose than to help mitigate the consequenes of the behaviors that they themselves have made prevelant.

On the institutional level, one sees the institutions of the Right -- from the Church to the Boy Scouts -- promote better lives by working to encourage people to better themselves. The institutions of the Left -- from the ACLU to the radicacl feminist movement -- do seek not to help people become better, but only to force society to accept and REWARD people AS THEY ARE, unchanged.

On the policy level, one finds that the Right seeks to promote those behaviors that best help people to achieve their goals. The Left works only to undermine the recognition of those bettter behaviors and then to legislate policy that seeks to (somewhat) mitigate the consequences of the failure to engage in the better behaviors.

For example, the Right recognizes that childhood abstinence is a behavior that improves the child's chances for future success. To us it's a no-brainer that unwanted pregancies, grisly abortions and being infected with sexually transmitted diseases makes less likely the child free to achieve as much with their lives as they would like. The Left, on the other hand, sees the promotion of the better behavior as a form of bigotry, calling it the work of "religious fanatics" or the "sexually repressed," and, in turn, work to rehabilitate the image of promiscuity in their movies, TV shows, schools and the legislatures they control. When this promotion of the destructive behaviors lead -- as they have and must -- to the undermining of the child's future success, the Democrat then seeks policies designed to lessen the suffering that they themselves induced.

So, where the Right Thinker promotes childhood and teenage abstinence (knowing full well that it won't work 100 percent of the time, as NOTHING works 100 percent of the time), the Democrat promotes promiscuity and then advances policies like easy and free abortions to mitigate the consequences of childhood and teenage promiscuity. Similarly, when their policies lead -- as they have and must -- to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases amongst the children of America (with fully one out of four young girls in New York City now infeccted with at least one or more STD) -- they then put forth policy that forceably injects ALL children with one vaccine or another to make less likely the chance of contracting one of the STDs that now run rampant.

The problem, of course, beyond the mere moral destruction of our society and the theft of the innocence of the youth of America, is that, while some of these vaccines -- injected into even the children who act in the better ways -- may prevent ONE of these diseases, it does nothing to prevent a whole range of others.

Another example of this paradigm is the Rights' insistence that immigrants learn to speak English. It is self-evident to those of us on the Right that the ability to speak the language of the majority is a big plus for those immigrant who wish to accomplish their dreams in America. Clearly, if an immigrant is a salesman, he can sell to more people if he speaks the language of the majority. If the immigrant is a scientist, he can apply for a job as a scientist at AMGEN or Johnson and Johnson. If he DOESN'T speak the language of the other scientists, the ONLY job he can get is one where his communications skills are of minimal importance, such as the minimum wage job of janitor.

The Left, on the other hand, sees the insistence that one learn the language of the majority as a form of bigotry. Some have gone so far as to call it an attempt by the Right to commit "cultural genocide" of the immigrant. For this reason the Left works to undermine efforts to encourage the immigrant to learn the language of the majority, guaranteeing that they will be locked into minimum wage jobs, and then hop into action to mitigate the suffering of those they have forced to suffer by insisting upon a raise in the minimum wage.

It gets worse. Since the immigrant has rights, in order to satisfy these rights, the majority must learn the many, many languages of the immigrants. Voting documents must be printed up in hundreds of languagess while police departments in every city and town must learn to speak Spanish (etc) in order to properly "Mirandize" suspected criminals. In other words, once again, the indiscriminateness of thought that is the defining trait of the Modern Liberal movement leads the Modern Liberal to create an Orwellian world where their subjects suffer, while a cultural genocide IS taking place -- against America and against our children

Israel National News reports that there's a MSM campaign being waged against the Jewish owners of the Peace House. Any expulsion from the building has been posponed for now, but it's apparent that yes, there is hostility in the media against Jews owning it, if this Jerusalem Post article could be any indication:

Police have said the documents of sale were forged. Although the issue of ownership is still under legal debate, the High Court of Justice has said there is enough administrative evidence to uphold the Palestinian claim and that, as such, the Hebron Jews should not live there.

So let's see if I have this right. The Post is contributing to the self-hate campaign, are they? I think they could use a little feedback giving an opinion from the other side of the lawn about what we think of their atrocious attempt to delegitimize a Jew's right to buy property where he/she chooses. Go to their contact page and let them know what you think of them for propagandizing in favor of the enemy.

We ran this story the other day, but it was from Debka, which I don't trust, so I didn't make that big a deal of it. But, now the BBC is reporting that Zawahiri is calling Obama out on the truth;

that he is the son of a Muslim father, who has converted to Christianity, and therefore, he is an apostate.

Of course, the BBC does not frame the story that way, either because they don't understand, or more likely, because they don't want to tell the truth, but that's what Zawahiri is saying:

Zawahiri also criticised Mr Obama - whose father is Muslim - for betraying the Islamic world.

"You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America," he said.

Mr Obama was not an "honourable black American" like Malcolm X, he said, but an "abeed al-beit" - a word that translates as house slave but was rendered "house negro" in the message's English subtitles.

The audio was accompanied by footage of a speech by Malcolm X in which he distinguished between "field negroes" who hated their white masters and "house negroes" who, he said, were loyal to them.

The Arabic word Zawahiri used is "murtad", which literally translates as Apostate.

In Islam, an Apostate is subject to be stoned to death.

This proclamation by Zawahiri amouths to a death threat against Obama.

UPDATE: I have now seen video of the Zawahiri message. I did not hear the word "murtad", though Debka reported that that was the word used. Still, the message Zawahiri gives is clear, Obama is the son of a Muslim who has turned on the Ummah.

Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%. The view, reported in the latest Nature Geoscience journal, is based on a study of Australian soils that finds the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by Australian soils is much lower than previously believed. The finding has major implications for climate change predictions as annual carbon emissions from soils are estimated to be more than all human-made CO2 emissions combined.

The Australian and US researchers say emissions from soils are lower because they contain a much higher proportion of charcoal, or black carbon, than estimated by previous models. "Current models of global climate change .. are inaccurate if a larger fraction of soil organic carbon than postulated has a very slow decomposition rate," they write. Co-author Dr Evelyn Krull, of CSIRO Land and Water, says charcoal, which is formed in the aftermath of bushfires, is a very stable form of carbon that can last for millennia. "In effect it's a carbon sink," Krull says.

Under the commonly used RothC model, the proportion of black carbon is calculated to be about 6.6%, she says. Krull says in their study of 452 soil samples from the Australian National Soil Archive and two landscape transects of about 3000km in Queensland and the Northern Territory, charcoal content ranged from zero to 82%. She says the average proportion of charcoal present for all 452 soil samples was 20.4%.

The team found by including realistic estimates of charcoal in their climate prediction models, the amount of CO2 predicted to be released from two Australian savannah regions under a 3§C warming scenario was 18.3% and 24.4% lower than previously calculated. For Australia, a proportion of 20% charcoal in soils would lead to a 135 teragram (135 billion kilograms) overestimation on a continental scale. "On an annual basis, an inflated prediction from topsoils alone equates to ... 84% of CO2 emissions associated with aviation for Australia using values obtained for 2006," the paper says.

Krull, who has analysed soil samples from across the globe since the paper was prepared, says she has found soils from countries around the same latitude as Australia have similar charcoal content. She says this means that current scenarios predicted by climate change modeling "are making it look worse than it actually would be". This highlights the need for a global initiative to analyse soils worldwide for charcoal content so that modeling can be more accurate, she says.

I am sure they are. They are more prone to crime. Hispanics born of illegal immigrant parents are in fact much more crime-prone than their parents, who are in turn more crime-prone than non-Hispanic whites. And the hugely disproportionate incidence of crime among blacks is well-known. The ACLU can only make something out of the matters described below by ignoring all that and insisting on the hoary and totally-counterfactual Leftist assertion that all men are equal and that there are no intergroup differences

A civil rights advocacy group released a report Monday saying that minority public school students in East Hartford and West Hartford are more likely to be arrested for common disciplinary infractions than their white peers. The American Civil Liberties Union and its Connecticut chapter also alleges that minority students in the two towns are arrested at rates much higher than the percentages of blacks and Hispanics in the school populations.

ACLU officials said they and other civil rights activists are concerned about "a national trend of criminalizing, rather than educating, our nation's children, through increased reliance on zero-tolerance school discipline, school-based arrests, disciplinary alternative schools and secure detention." "One dismaying aspect ... is its disproportionate impact on students of color," the ACLU says. "Across the nation, such students are far more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled or arrested, even when engaging in exactly the same conduct.

Police in East Hartford and West Hartford denied that officers single out minority students. They also questioned the ACLU's data and said their school resource officers are highly trained.

In East Hartford, black and Hispanic students accounted for 69 percent of the student population in 2006-2007, but comprised 85 percent of school-based arrests, the ACLU says. In West Hartford the same year, 24 percent of students were black or Hispanic but 63 percent of students who were arrested were black or Hispanic....

Police officials in both towns denied that race played a role in student arrests. "The arrests are based solely on the students' behavior," said East Hartford police Officer Hugo Benettieri, a department spokesman. "If a crime occurs, an arrest is made."

Unrepentant "small 'c' communist" Bill Ayers was given a platform by Terry Gross yesterday to deny that he ever was a terrorist.

It was a nauseating interview.

However, he did admit, on tape, that the bomb which prematurely blew up at their 11th street I.E.D. factory, killing his then-girlfriend Diane Oughton, along with Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, was an anti-personnel weapon intended to kill US Army NCOs at a dance at Fort Dix.

He claims it wasn't his idea and that after much soul-searching and anguish over the ensuing few months the Weather Underground decided to eschew such attacks.

Meanwhile, of course, his allies in the Black Liberation Army murdered 12 policemen, including the first black policeman on the Nyack, New York, Police force.

Bill Ayers should have been locked up for life without parole 30 years ago.

Lugging a red suitcase and calling on other politicians to join him, MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) defied an evacuation order by the High Court of Justice and moved Tuesday afternoon into the disputed four-story Hebron building, whose tenants have until Wednesday morning to vacate the premises.

"I will stay here as long as I need to, until the army comes. I hope that if we are here, the army won't come," said Ze'ev, as he came to take up residence at Beit Hashalom.

The eviction order was issued Sunday, spurring the Hebron Jewish community and right-wing activists throughout the country to launch protest actions. They have pledged not to abandon the structure, located on the main road between Kiryat Arba and the Cave of the Patriarchs.

On Tuesday night, some 1,000 activists gathered in Kiryat Arba to listen to rousing speeches against the eviction, after which four new families moved into the structure, joining the nine who already live there.

Standing in front of a roaring crowd, Rabbi Zalman Melamed called on policemen and soldiers not to participate in the eviction.

"Police have to tell their commanders, 'I joined the force to preserve the law and not to unjustly evict Jews from their homes,'" he said.

According to Hebron community spokeswomen Orit Stuck, the activists have pledged to avoid violence against the security forces.

But at Tuesday night's meeting, MK Arye Eldad, (NU-NRP), warned that any evacuation attempt would meet with even stronger resistance than occurred when nine empty homes were destroyed at the Amona outpost in February 2006.

More than 200 security personnel and activists were injured during those confrontations.

"Those who evacuate Beit Hashalom will long for Amona," Eldad said.

MK Uri Ariel (NU-NRP) said, "If we are attacked, we will defend ourselves."

With an eye to the upcoming national elections, Eldad called on Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu to pledge not to evacuate the building should he become prime minister. Eldad noted that the Amona clashes also occurred during an election campaign.

Former Likud MK Ayoub Kara slammed Kadima and its party leader Tzipi Livni.

"The State of Israel won't become Kadima's casino," said Kara. Of Livni he said, "You are not good for Israel, you are good for Hamas."

Members of Hebron's Jewish community first moved into Beit Hashalom in March 2007. The High Court has rejected their claim that they purchased it from its Palestinian owner.

But some 50 Knesset members, including 10 from Kadima, have expressed support in recent months for the right of Hebron Jews to the structure.

None, however, have gone as far as Ze'ev, who plans to sleep there with his family and to hold some of his reception hours there.

"All the parliamentarians who have spoken out on behalf of this building should sleep here and open an office here as well," he said.

Before heading to Hebron, he secured the support of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, he said. His party, he added, was working to appeal the decision, or at least delay its implementation until after the February 10 elections.

"It cannot be that families will be taken out of here by force," the MK said.

But like Eldad, he warned, that if they were, "then the chapter of Amona will repeat itself."

If the property was legally bought, whether the Arab who sold it to them wants to admit it or not, the court cannot evict them, and the government should not be causing them problems either. The court's decision should be protested.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Eric H. Holder Jr., Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration, asserted in a speech to the American Constitution Society (ACS) that the United States must reverse “the disastrous course” set by the Bush administration in the struggle against terrorism by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, declaring without qualification that the U.S. does not torture people, ending the practice of transferring individuals involuntarily to countries that engage in torture and ceasing warrantless domestic surveillance.

WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE OF ENEMY SIGNALS IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND KEEPS US SAFE. GETTING WARRANTS FOR EVERY INTERCEPT IS IMPRACTICAL AND UNNECESSARY.

BUSH HAS REPEATEDLY SAID THE USA DOESN'T TORTURE. WATER-BOARDING ISN'T TORTURE. THE PROOF OF THIS IS THE FACT THAT BOOZERS LIKE HITCHENS HAVE VOLUNTEERED FOR IT AND HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT IT. NO ONE VOLUNTEERS FOR REAL TORTURE.

GITMO KEEPS US SAFE MERELY BY KEEPING THE PRISONERS THERE AND OUT OF THE USA, OUT OF OUR TOWNS.

Some have compared Dubya to Hoover. Others to Truman. I think he's more like Nixon: spending all of his political capital successfully "Vietnamizing" Iraq and getting NO CREDIT WHATSOEVER for his liberal accomplishments - which are numerous, and which account for why Bush is so low in the polls. Bush is low in the polls because he pissed off conservatives without picking up ANY liberal supportin return. He did this with signing CFR, signing NCLB, pushing Miers, pushing amnesty, signing DRUGS FOR SENIORS an the largest increases in domestic spending since LBJ.

Nixon also did a lot of liberal things and got ZERO CREDIT FOR IT: detente, arms control, the EPA, the CLEAN WATER/CLEAN AIR ACT, wage & price controls, opening China, bring all the troops home from Vietnam in 1973, ending the draft.

NIXON LIKE BUSH GOT ZERO CREDIT FROM THE LIBS.

McCain likewise lost because he got ZERO credit in the election for being a bi-partisan / GOP maverick who supported green taxes and AMNESTY, etc. SHIT: MCCAIN GOT CLOBBERED BY THE HISPANICS. (I don't know who are the bigger idiots: the Hispanics who didn't support their friend McCain or McCainiacs for thinking that the way to gain their support was to give the illegals amnesty.)

And IF Bush is more like Nixon, then of course Obama will be more Like Carter: an inept anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-defense-spending liberal who will somersault from misstep to misstep and make our enemies stronger.

Obama isn't like Bill Clinton or Reagan - who were both very experienced executives and very experienced politicians.

Obama isn't like Lincoln who was prescient. Obama was wrong about Iraq and the Surge - and all those close buddies he threw under the bus.

Obama isn't like FDR who was a consummate politician and experienced in DC and ALBANY and on the national scene for decades.

Obama is like Carter - but will probably be even worse and disappoint more people even more. Carter had at least once been in the military and once ran his own business and had been a governor.

In one respect Bush will be like Truman: In time a vast majority of Americans will regard his presidency will respect and thanks. Something we owe Nixon but which he will probably never receive.

REMEMBER THIS ABOUT NIXON: he only served 5 years. And did more good for the US And the world than Clinton did in 8. Or than Obama will ever do.

The dust has not settled yet - but it is clear that the current financial crisis is more than a serious correction plus mega-negative psychology. And it has much more to do with plain old greed than any systemic shortcomings of "honest" capitalism. A picture is emerging of banks systematically loaning billions of (pick your currency) to ill conceived real estate projects. For example, in Copenhagen there are thousands of new apartments that cannot be sold - and thousands more on the verge of completion. Huge sums are being wiped off the books. Real Estate speculators and manipulators, who successfully borrowed hundreds of millions of (pick you currency) have shifted assets to their wives newly founded companies while they go bankrupt and banks collapse. In many sectors business leaders are taking the money and running away from responsibilty as they hope the chaos will camouflage their crimes. Will any of this scum face justice?

Why not? He'll talk with anyone right? Seriously - these criminals must be stopped. Piracy in this region was under control when the Islamic Courts were in control of Somalia. Now that they have been ousted from power they are using piracy to rebuild their strength and reconstitute their forces. Commercial vessels must begin to sail in convoy. The Mother Ship(s) that launch the assault vessels must be sunk. The ports that are safe haven to these organisations must be punished - at least with a blockade.

The Saudi Royal Family condemned Somali pirates as terrorists today after losing $100 million worth of oil in an audacious heist that saw bandits seize a supertanker in the Arabian Sea.

The Sirius Star, which was carrying two million barrels of oil, a quarter of the Kingdom's daily output, was captured with its multi-national crew, including two Britons, 450 miles off the coast of Kenya on Sunday.

The hijack was the biggest ever act of piracy in the perilous shipping lanes off the east coast of Africa. Vela International, the ship’s owners, said today that the crew were safe and that their response team was awaiting further contact with the gang.

The furious Saudi foreign minister said the banditry was akin to terrorism and demanded an international crackdown on the pirates.

Yes, just what we need, more international action, taken in tandem with an extremist Muslim nation.

Reliapundit sent me an email questioning whether it is possible that some of these "piracy" operations might be the work of the CIA, a way to give them a cloak for boarding and inspecting certain suspect ships in international waters.

That could be.

Personally, as the piracy has increased in recent weeks, I've been wondering if, perhaps, these pirates are like "Contraband launderers" or Illegal Customs Agents, who check cargo while it's out at sea, by seizing it, making payment, and then delivering it to its intended destination;

Liberalism or progressivism seeks to create a nanny state in which the state mandates all kinds of things for the good of the people. And no person is entitled to opt out or to thwart the decisions of the state. Thus liberal fascism.

Goldberg has on his cover a happy face with a Hitler mustache on it. By this he suggests that liberal fascism is appealing. Many people want a nanny state and thus are drawn to Hugo Chavez, Che Guevera and Barack Obama. i.e., fascism with a happy face. But as we have seen with Nazism, Communism and Islam, it can have dire consequences. In all cases it is accompanied by mind control which starts with controlling the message. Remember George Orwell's 1984, or Mao's farms for re-education or Arafat's inculcation of Jew hatred

Barak Obama is a proponent of liberal fascism. Not only does he want to take care of everyone, he means to take your money as if he was entitled to it, in order to finance his, the state's, plans. Gov. Palin pointed this out in her stump speeches. Joe Biden called giving your money to the state "patriotism".

In order to accomplish his ends he has concentrated on reeducating the kids to reject conventional wisdom and embrace his and Bill Ayers, wisdom. He supported ACORN and trained them to be shock troops. He mobilized moveon.org and the MSM to assist in cudgeling the people. We have seen videos of kids in school in fatigues chanting pro-Obama messages. This is very suggestive of the Hitler Youth movement that all German children were required to join. Many schools in the US are now educating the children to these socialist principles without the consent of the parents. Its called "social engineering".

On September 4th Investor's Business Daily (IBD), a mainstream paper of great repute, reported,

"Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993.

Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of `social change.

The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn't seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year "community leadership" positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They'll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats. In exchange, they'll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.

But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about "social change" through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation - the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul "The Red" Alinsky.

And Lee Cary wrote about Obama's Civilian National Security Force

Barack Obama's recent words to promote his image as Community Organizer in Chief were not about forming a paramilitary force of volunteer brown shirts. They were about turning America into one, giant, community organizer's sandbox at enormous cost to taxpayers. Senator Obama was nearly 17 minutes into his July 2 speech (yet another one where naming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was required) in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he deviated from his pre-released script and performed without the teleprompter net saying,

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

The immediate context for that amazing statement was a preview of parts of his plan to vastly expand community service opportunities for Americans of nearly all ages. He said,

"People of all ages, stations, and skills will be asked to serve."

On his web site he said that people would be "required" to serve. After much criticism he changed it to read "asked" to serve. And to make matters easier for his plans, he wants to disarm the people.

To be fair, both liberals and conservatives want to provide a security net for the people. They debate how big and strong that net should be. The real issue is at what cost to our freedom and independence. Conservatives are trying to protect such things and the liberals don't value them in the same way or to he same extent. They value the collective over the individual.

Democrats are quick to charge Republicans with fascism because, for example, Republicans want to maintain Guantanamo Bay and want profiling or wire tapping in certain cases. In effect they say this is an infringement of personal rights. As I said just above, providing the security net or or this case security itself, certain rights are infringed. What separates us is when restrictions are warranted and when they are not. Everyone must decide for themselves what is the biggest threat to their freedom.

Taking care of the weak in society is an admirable objective. The liberals have claimed this as their brand. But will they deliver on their promise?

Monday, November 17, 2008

You may recall my posting last month about what happened to No Compromise, when Blog Talk Radio interrupted Tracy's interview of Philip J. Berg, who filed a federal law suit about Barack Obama's citizenship qualifications for the Office of President of the United States. Just a few minutes into the interview, Tracy's show was shut down, her account suspended, and the archives placed on hold, unavailable for listening. In fact, going to the show's web site resulted in the site-not-found message.

Now that the election is over, Blog Talk Radio has reinstated No Compromise:

An interesting turn of events occurred: The election is over, so I guess Blog Talk Radio decided it was safe for an outspoken critic of the Obamunist to have her show back. As if I, or anyone else could do any harm to the messiah! If he’s such a messiah why silence his critics? Wow, what a god he must be!...

Perhaps Berg's law suit has no merit. Indeed, a ruling, a dismissal, has already been issued by a federal court, quite an unsatisfactory ruling which did not specifically address the Constitutional questions presented. Berg has now taken his law suit to the United States Supreme Court.

But whatever merit the law suit has or doesn't have isn't the point, particularly with regard to what happened to No Compromise. The point is this: Why the push to silence the discussion, particularly before the election? Also, are Obama's followers so maniacal that they have to silence even the asking of questions? Let's recall these words warning about the supression of free speech, from George Washington:

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

I've been unable to confirm whether or not the Supreme Court of the United States is going to hear Berg's law suit. I have read, however, that Obama, the DNC, and all co-defendants will have to respond to Berg's writ of certiorari by December 1. Wikipedia says the following about writ of certiorari:

A writ of certiorari currently means an order by a higher court directing a lower court to send the record in a given case for review.

But suppose for a minute that Obama is indeed Constitutionally unqualified for the Office of President. Then what? After all, he won the election on November 4.

A stack of wedding thank-you cards were waiting to be mailed when four Marines allegedly burst into the California home of Brooklyn-bred Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak and his new bride, Quiana.

By the time the bullets hit their brains, the newlyweds had been bound and gagged, forced to endure sadistic torture - and she had been violated repeatedly, court records show.

"Nobody deserves a death like this, least of all good, young people with bright futures," Riverside County prosecutor Daniel Delimon said.

Investigators say the motive for the shocking murders was robbery, but neither Pietrzak's mother in Brooklyn nor his in-laws near San Diego believe that.

"Nobody does something like this to human beings just to rob them," said Henryka Pietrzak-Varga. "They wanted to hurt them."

Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak's father said he's heard talk that the Marines - all of whom are black - visited pain on his gorgeous 26-year-old daughter because she was black and Pietrzak was white. But he's not ready to accept that horrible possibility.

"I have no thought on any of that until the whole thing comes out, until they finally figure out why that happened," said Roy Jenkins.

Investigators are also checking whether one of the accused Marines, Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, had ties to the violent Crips gang.

I've heard a bit about the Crips, a mob that operates on the west coast.

What's really horrifying about the wife's rape and murder at the hands of these savages is that it's vaguely reminiscient of the Muslim mindset: she was murdered for daring to marry a white man.

None of the suspects has entered a plea. They have already ratted out [Emrys] John as the triggerman who shot the Pietrzaks in the back of their heads, prosecutors said.

All the suspects admit that Quiana was sexually assaulted, but with a possible death penalty hanging over their heads, none is admitting to attacking her.

Since all four of the suspects took part in the rape and murder, all four of them should be given the death sentence for their crime. Period. Chain them and throw them into a deep ravine with jagged rocks, or better yet, throw them into a flaming lava pit.

But it's a foregone conclusion that charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will not say a genuine word about this case, one more reason why violent crimes like these are likely to continue.